


Empty spaces

by potanio



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff, Hurt Lance (Voltron), Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mutual Pining, also nb pidge, great lifeadvises with pidge™
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-26
Updated: 2017-01-26
Packaged: 2018-09-20 03:02:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9472616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potanio/pseuds/potanio
Summary: Keith had always liked the quiet, there were nothing worse than people screaming or talking with obnoxiously loud voices. Lance was like a combination of these two things and it was more than Keith could deal with.So why did it hurt so much when Lance got hurt, and every day Keith spent in the quiet made him feel empty?One thing was sure-spending five days straight sulking outside the healingpod was certainly not helping, especially since it made Keith slowly understand what the strange feelings actually meant...





	

**Author's Note:**

> this was supposed to be like 3k but i apparently can't write short stories¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

There were very few times when the blue paladin would be quiet, and the air was often filled with his obnoxiously loud voice and the unnecessary jokes which Keith never quite understood. The first few days Keith had spent in the castle he simply couldn’t bear Lances incapability of remaining silent, his voice echoing through the empty corridors of the castle was so very different from the silence in his old cottage, surrounded by miles of abandoned desert.

But as the days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months Keith slowly began to notice that the noise no longer bothered him as much as it used to, and it was actually rather nice from time to time! It became a part of his daily life, and it made the castle feel almost, just almost like a home.

Sadly, it was first when Keith looked up on Lance’s lifeless body resting the cryopod that he realized how much it had meant to him, and how much he missed the sound now when it was gone.

It wasn’t like Lance hadn’t spent time in the cryopod before, almost every one of them had been there at least once by now! But the longest time Lance, or any one of them had spent in there was one day at max.

Lance had been there for five now.

Keith hugged his knees a little tighter to his body as he sat there with his gaze attached on Lance’s sleeping face, disappointed that his beautiful clear blue eyes weren’t staring back and his usual signature grin was nowhere to be seen.

The fact that Lance was beautiful was nothing that Keith could deny anymore. He’d really tried to earlier, but when the quick glances of curiosity were replaced by glance after glance of pining, Keith knew that he no longer could continue to push away these unknown feelings.

Slowly, Keith lowered his glance towards Lance’s waist instead, where he knew that the white fabric from the bodysuit was covering a huge scar. The memories of the accident hit Keith like a punch in his guts, the incident still mixed together with a big blur of anger and fear.

They had been on a planet covered with herbs and the trees was colored in the softest pink you could ever imagine, Keith recalled. The air smelled vaguely of lavender and their mission had been easy enough. They were supposed to collect some herbs which purpose was to ease the pain caused by burns, and the inhabitants of the planet was kind enough to guide help them separate the burn-soothing ones from the poisonous.  They had just finished up their work, and were saying their goodbyes to the population when a hooded figure colored in forest green fabric appeared behind the chief of the inhabitants, with something shining shimmering in his right hand…

Lance had reacted before anyone of the others even had time to open their mouths, and he run as fast as he could towards the assassin, pushing the chief out of the way. When the knife hit a target, it was not the chief’s heart it struck through, but Lance’s left side.

It took a few seconds before Keith had progressed what had happened, and here is when his memories start to get whimsy. All he can remember is clenching his bayard so tight that his hand began to pound, and the next second the assassin is lying unconscious by his feet, and he is once again cradling Lance’s almost lifeless body, panicking by the sight of the knife that is still attached slightly below his ribs.

“Hey, Keith” Lance had said, with a low and muffled voice, and Keith can’t remember if he’d managed to say something in return due to the heavy lump of emotions that was stuck in his throat

“Do you think I get to keep the knife?”

Keith had let out a small laugh then, because it was such a _Lance_ thing to do, to make his last words a stupid joke as an attempt to cheer up the others.

 It didn’t take many tics after that until the rest of the paladins appeared, the suspense lying thick in the air alongside with the horrifying silence. Somewhere in between the confusion, Shiro had carefully taken Lance from Keith’s trembling arms and lifted him up before rapidly making his way back to the castle, hoping it would not be too late.

Somehow, Keith had managed to return to the castle as well, how he can’t quite remember. One second he was lying on the ground observed by the mumbling aliens, and the next one he’s gathered with the rest of the team on the cold stone floor by the healing pods as Allura terrified, but determined  drags out the knife from Lance’s side, and the blood streaming from the gaping wound colors the floor red. But it luckily doesn’t last long since Lance is soon safely placed inside the pod, and the paladins slowly begins to calm down enough to breath. There is still a red puddle on the floor, and Allura tells everyone with a trembling voice that if they had been only a few minutes later, Lance might not have been able to make it.

The thing about Lance is that he isn’t just a pretty face or a person made up by dumb jokes and stupid comebacks. No, he’s so much more. Keith hadn’t realized this at first, but the more he thought about it, he noticed that (almost) every stupid thing Lance did was for a reason, like brining the attention to himself when it was making someone else uncomfortable or asking the questions he _knew_ that someone was thinking, but did not dare to ask, or when he’d do anything to protect those that trusted him.

Like getting stabbed in order to save a strangers life.

And it scared him. It scared him because this made Keith realize that the things he felt for Lance was not only attraction, but something so much more. It scared him because his feelings were so large that it hurt so much knowing that all of this was probably unrequired. It hurt because he couldn’t imagine losing Lance for good with all of these feelings still buried deep inside of him, unable to tell him the truth. It hurt because the only time he got to hold Lance the way he so deeply wanted was when he was so close to losing him, and-

 

“Hey Keith, can I talk to you for a moment?”

Keith returned from his thoughts, and turned around to see Pidge leaning towards the doorway

“Sure.” He answered, his voice only a little raspy from not using it for a few days.

Pidge made their way over, and Keith noticed the bags below their eyes. It seemed as it was not only Keith that hadn’t slept that much lately. Pidge stood next to Keith for a few seconds, while impatiently tapping their fingers against their leg, trying to collect all their thoughts.

“We know that you’re worried about Lance, we are all worried about him! Promise you won’t tell him this when he wakes up, but he’s really important to me and I sort of view him as an older brother! Everything is so different and empty without him, and we all miss him as hell.” Pidge had stopped tapping their finger and was now walking back and forth with their small hands gesticulating wildly in an attempt to clarify what they were saying.

“The thing is that we’re worried about you to.  You’ve been in here for almost five days now; do you even sleep anything at all? I know for a fact that you’ve haven’t showered at least, because you sort of look like a zombie. But my point is that just because Lance is temporary unconscious doesn’t make it okay for you to stop caring about yourself and ignoring the rest of us. We miss you Keith and you don’t have to keep everything inside of you. We’ll always be there to listen, if you want to.” Pidge stopped their ranting, awaiting Keith’s reply.

Wrapped up in all his anxious thoughts surrounding the blue paladin, Keith had almost for gotten that they were 3 other paladins, two Alteans and a couple of mice on board the ship as well. It might feel like it for the time being, but just because Lance isn’t there doesn’t mean that the castle is empty, there’s still people that Keith truly cares about that makes the ship feel like more of a home than one he’d ever had before.

“I-I’m sorry… and thanks Pidge. I’m not very good with this kind of stuff but I appreciate it, I really do.”

Pidge seated themselves next to Keith, with their arms tightly wrapped around their knees. “No prob, bob!” They said, and the tension in their shoulders seemed to have lifted as the words weighing down their body had escaped. “We don’t blame you for sitting here and ignoring us day after day, well only a little-but we know it’s because you have a crush on him, so we know that you don’t hate the rest of us and stuff so that’s okay!”

Wait what? Had he heard Pidge right or was the lack of sleep getting to his head?

Keith had apparently said that out loud, ‘cause Pidge were once again grinning that teasing smirk, their anxiety and worry completely gone.

“It’s not like you were very subtle! Because according to my experiences, people don’t usually make hearty-eyes to their friends all the time, or blush every time they get a compliment by that said person. Or spend five days waiting for them to wake up outside the healing pod, worrying his poor and innocent teammates to death!”

Oh. Keith could feel his face get warmer and he was happy that the lights were enough dimmed so that Pidge wouldn’t notice the obvious blush on his face. Things were awkward enough as it was.

Keith slowly mumbled the question that he couldn’t stop thinking about. “Do you think he knows it yet?”

“Of course he doesn’t, he’s almost as dense as you! Like he didn’t even notice that I weren’t a guy! Well not that I’m a girl either but you get my point.” Pidge were still smiling that obnoxious smile as If they knew something that he did not. “And if he’d figured it out, we’d known it by now, trust me.”

Keith let out the breath that he didn’t know he’d been holding. He supposed he’d have to be more careful with his feelings in the future, since apparently the whole castle (besides Lance) already knew. Keith could still feel the heat on his face, and the heavily beating of his heart. He certainly wasn’t looking forwards to their next team-meeting…

“Hey Pidge, I’m sorry for ignoring you guys, I really am. I just got caught up in my head I guess.”

Pidge smiled and this time it wasn’t that teasing one, but a very sincere smile. “It’s okay, just do me a favor and clean yourself up, yeah? And at least try to talk to us in the future, since we somewhat knows what you’re going through. Isolation never works!”

Keith nodded, before continuing; “One last thing, promise you won’t tell Lance about this, right?”

“My lips are sealed!” Pidge grinned and pretended to lock their lips with an imaginary key, before throwing it away.

…

“Promise not to tell me what?”

Pidge and Keith turned around at once, not quite sure if what they’d heard had been true or not. Well, not what they’d heard, rather _who’d_ said it.

And sure enough, there he stood, a bit wobbly on his feet and his light brown face a bit paler than it normally would be, but it was him. And when Lance’s blue eyes finally met his, Keith knew just for a small moment that things might actually turn out okay.

Before Keith had time to think through what he was doing and realize how _extremely_ stupid it was, his legs had begun to quickly walk, as if by themselves towards Lance. Before he knew it, Keith had wrapped his arms around him, hugging him tightly since the only times he got to do this was when Lance’s life was slowly drifting away, and he wouldn’t be able to go through that once again. But this time, Lance was alive and secure, and Keith never wanted to let go.

Lance had been stiff at first, as if he hadn’t really understood what’d happened. But then Keith could feel a pair of lanky arms wrapped around his waist, and the hug felt relaxed. Safe.

“Don’t you dare to do that again.” Keith finally said, with his head resting on Lance’s shoulder.

Lance chuckled lightly. “Do what again? You have to be a bit more specific!”

“The almost dying thing. Don’t do it.”

“I can’t promise you that, unless you haven’t found a way to gain immortality which would be cool as fuck!” Lance pulled away from the hug, only to grab Keith’s hands instead. “Buut I’ll try to do my best, mullet!”

A wolf whistle brought Keith back to reality, just to notice that not only Pidge, but the rest of the team as well were standing a little bit away from them, all shining with joy to see Lance being on his feet again. Hunk was even crying of happiness from the sight of his best friend, and Pidge were lowering their fingers from their mouth.

“Hey, don’t take Lance for yourself, save that to later!”

Keith could feel his heart skip a beat, and his face quickly turning awfully red, as if he was nothing more than an exaggerative cartoon character. It was first now that he realized what he’d done, which probably wasn’t a big deal to other people since people hug each other all the time! But for Keith, who constantly despised people’s lack of respect for personal spaces, hugging the person you kind of liked without even as much looking at himself in the mirror for several days was kind off a pretty big deal. And Pidge didn’t improve the situation with their teasing and hinting, since that apparently wasn’t included in their agreement.

He quickly let go of Lance’s hands as if he’d gotten burned, and slowly backed away. Keith didn’t have a chance to find out how Lance reacted to all of this (not that he was sure that he wanted to know), for the moment he let go of him, Hunk had wrapped his arms tightly around Lance, lifting him up in the air as the tears of joy ran down along his face, and Lance was laughing as the rest of them joined in some sort of group hug.

Keith, on the other hand had his fair share of hugs for today and he felt as if he was slowly beginning to lose control, so he decided to take his escape to his room to try to figure out what had even happened.

Well, it’s better to flee than to fence poorly.

Keith mumbled some half-hearted excuse before evacuating the room, not quite sure if the rest had heard him or not but he didn’t really care. His cheeks were still feeling hot as he stormed through the corridor, and remained so until he reached his destination and slammed the door shut with a loud bang.

His room was not as neatly tidied as it usually was, since Keith hadn’t really found the strength to clean up after him the past week. Even though Keith’s appearance and personality told otherwise, he quite enjoyed to have it nicely around him. But, Keith had more important issues to think about than cleaning, so he seated himself on his unmade bed with his head buried in his hands.

Things were certainly not going his way right now.

Keith’s emotions were all over the place. He was happy that Lance finally had recovered, and to have that empty space in the castle filled. But to immediately hug him after spending days trapped inside his own head, scared and worried, and also knowing that the whole castle somehow knew about his feelings was not quite how he’d wanted this to go.

Hell, even Lance had probably figured it out by now.

Keith almost felt like laughing, why did it had  to be that for the first time he ever felt romantic feelings towards another person, it had to be on a teammate which he was somehow stuck in a spaceship with. And to make things even better, he would probably never feel the same.

What would happen between them now? If Lance somehow had realized how Keith felt, would this be the end of their friendship, that they’d worked so hard on to achieve? Would they even be able to form Voltron anymore, or would they fail to save the galaxy only because Keith hadn’t been careful enough and didn’t push these feelings as far back in his chest as he should have.

But there was still a small voice in his head that told him that maybe, just maybe, all this wasn’t unrequired. Lance had hugged him back after all!

Keith figured that he should probably take Pidge’s advice and take a shower, not only because he noticed how greasy his hair was when he anxiously run his fingers through it, but also in hope that it might clear his head a bit.

Face to face with his reflection in the mirror, Keith truly understood what Pidge’d meant. The circles under his eyes were almost twice as big as Pidge’s had been, and words can’t explain how… peculiar his haired looked. The fact that Lance had hugged him looking like this was a mystery to Keith.

He couldn’t resist to blink towards his reflection a few times, just to make sure that the boy in the mirror was actually him and not some creature that had followed him from the swamp-planet they’d been to a few weeks earlier. When Keith figured that this was actually him, he blinked one last time before heading into the shower.

 

…

 

Thirteen minutes later and with a change of clothes, Keith felt a little bit more like a human. But it took yet another thirteen minutes pacing back and forth in his room before Keith found enough courage to return to the rest of the team, and face reality.

He’d tried running away from all of this, god knows he’d tried. But Pidge’s words has made him realise more things than his need of a shower, and that was that he was a part of a team, _a family,_ and hiding from the people he loved in fear of rejection would not solve a single thing.

But it was easier said than done. For every step Keith took, the voices and laughter became louder and the urge to return to the safety of his bed grew stronger with them.

When he stood face to face with the “living room”, Keith mentally went through all his stupid life-choices that had lead him to this moment. But here he was, and there was no going back now,

The door opened with a creak, and Keith faced something that looked strangely like a slumber party. They were placed in some sort of circle around Lance who was leaning towards Hunk while braiding Allura’s long, white hair in some complicated pattern. Keith could remember that Lance had at some point mentioned that he was the one always braiding his many sisters’ hair before important events back on earth, but it was a completely different thing to see it in person.

It had been a while since he’d seen all of them looking this happy, laughing at a story Coran had told them which seemed to have included an Altean chicken and a vacuum machine(did they even have vacuum machines in space? Apparently...), and Keith couldn’t help but feeling a tug in his stomach when he saw them like this, knowing how much pain he must had caused them lately.

It was Shiro that first noticed Keith’s appearance, his happy face turning into his _“kinda upset but also sort off worried dad”_ one, as Lance used to call it and Keith felt even more regret. It hadn’t been his meaning to cause Shiro this kind of trouble, especially since Shiro already had more than enough stuff to tire him already. Keith met Shiro’s glance, trying to tell him without words that he was sorry and that he hadn’t meant to hurt them.

Shiro somehow seemed to understand Keith’s silent apology, since he nodded his head and his _“kinda upset but also sort off worried dad_ ” face was once again replaced by the happy and welcoming one.

The second person to notice him was Pidge who waived their hands, shouting Keith’s name and telling him that he had to taste some of the space-goo ice-cream Hunk had made. Pidge’s hair was braided into two neat French-braids, apart from the hairs that refused to cooperate and Keith assumed that Lance had been on the go here as well.

“I’m lactose intolerant, unfortunately.” Keith replied, trying to ignore the way Lance had twitched when he heard Keith’s name being mentioned.

“Suit yourself” Pidge shrugged, and brought another spoon of the green, mysterious looking “Ice-cream” to their mouth.

Even though they did a good job at concealing it, Keith could feel the vague tension in the room, knowing very well that there was a lot of dealing with stuff needing to be done. Keith sat down on the armrest to the sofa that Pidge’d occupied, and tried to ignore the tug in his guts.

Coran had started telling another classic Altean story, this time a throwback to when a young Coran had accidentally gotten himself engaged with a girl from Utheon, and had almost gotten married to her as well before king Alfor had to step in and sort out the mistake.

“How could I have known that asking about her secret family recipe was an Ultheon proposal? I was unable to leave the planet for about three Quintants!”Coran said, and Allura burst into laughter at the memories.

Hunk snorted. “That reminded me of that time Lance got tied to a tree and robbed on his “date” with Nyma, whiich wouldn’t have happened if you all had just listen to what I said!” Pidge rolled their eyes at the fact that Hunk still hadn’t let go of this. Lance, on the other hand looked slightly embarrassed.

They fell into an, according to Keith, uncomfortable silence after that, only broken by Lance’s soft humming of some popular earth-song as he worked on Allura’s braid.

Lance hummed for a little longer, until he put an end to the silence for real. “You know, I actually got to keep the knife by the way! Shiro and Allura , those spoilsports” both Shiro and Allura sighed at this, “-thought they’d throw it away, but Coran convinced them  that I’d get to choose what I’d like to do with it! So I figured you might want to see it _mullet_ , considering your weird knife-obsession and all that!”

He nodded towards the table where a long and pointy knife laid next to the ice-cream bowl, and Keith wondered why he hadn’t seen it before now. With a somehow uncertain arm, Keith reached towards the knife to pick it up

It was a very pretty knife, carved in a dark wood that reminded Keith of mahogany. On its surface the knife was covered in engraved patterns.  Keith wasn’t quite sure if they were some sort of drawings or writing, but it was pretty either way. The knife’s weight was quite nice as well, maybe a bit too light for Keith’s preference, but it was otherwise still more than a decent knife

Keith hadn’t really paid that much attention to the appearance of knife earlier when the incident had taken place. He’d had more important things to worry about then, like how this exact knife, handle drenched in blood was attached to Lace’s torso, and how the blood streaming from Lance’s body when Allura pulled out the knife never seemed to stop, colouring Keith’s vision dark red, and the horrifying moment when they weren’t sure if Lance would make it.

The memories took over once again, almost like a tsunami crawling up from behind, dragging Keith with it, the water making him feel like drowning, unable to breathe…

The knife fell to the floor with a loud bang, and everyone’s concerned eyes were directed at him. The comfortable chatter in the room had dropped along with the knife, and this time they didn’t even try to hide the suspense. Keith took a few breaths, attempting to calm himself down, trying to ignore the eyes. Well, mostly Lance’s eyes.

Allura cleared her  throat  awkwardly, stretching her arms. “Weell, this has been a nice… bonding moment, but me and Coran has some urgent… castle things to talk about. Really urgent things! So if you’d excuse us! And thank you for the braid, Lance!” Allura rose from her spot, clearing her throat for a second time in a confused Coran’s direction, and it would under different circumstances almost be funny to watch how the realization hit him.

“Oh yeah, the super urgent meeting! We can’t forget about that one, can we? Important castle stuff to deal with, you know!” Coran hastily twinned his moustache, before following Allura out of the so called living room.

“No… problem?” Lance replied, looking almost as confused as Keith felt.

Shiro was the next person to stand up. “I think that I should get going as well, there’s some planning that needs to be done, and I can’t delay it anymore. See you guys at dinner!”

Slowly, Keith began to understand what was going on.

“We’d love to stay as well, but Hunk promised to show me some engineering’s-science stuff, which I’ve been dying to learn!” Pidge said.

Hunk wrinkled his eyebrows. “No- I didn’t… I thought you didn’t even like engineering?” Pidge elbowed their arm into Hunks side, eying him the same way as Allura had done at Coran a few ticks earlier.

“Well, I do now! So we’d better get going!” Pidge elbowed Hunk again, and this time he seemed to get Pidge’s peak. “Oh, because of Keith and La-“ Keith wanted to sink into the floor and disappear. Pidge really hadn’t lied when they’d said that almost everyone on the castle knew about how he felt… They weren’t even subtle about it!

“No, I mean sure thing, sure thing! Just gonna go and do some good old engineering with Pidge, nothing odd with that!” Hunk waived his had as a goodbye.  Keith could barely see Pidge mouthing something that seemed like “Good luck” to him, before they left the room as well, leaving Keith and Lance alone.

“Remind me that I have to play poker with them at some point; those were like the worst poker-faces I’ve ever seen and I’ve got three younger siblings!”  Lance rolled his eyes, and sunk deeper into the sofa.

Keith snorted in agreement. “Yeah, you tell me.”

They sat like that for a little while, embraced by the quiet and looking around dumbly at anything their eyes could find, except on each other of course.

“Hey Keith.” Lance had for the second time broken the silence, and was now unexpectedly rigid in comparison to what he’d been earlier. “I just wanted to thank you for waiting for me by outside the pod. Hunk told me about it a little bit earlier, which didn’t really surprise me that much considering the way you looked when I woke up, like dude your hair was a mess! But, I appreciated it, I really did!”

Keith wanted to sink even deeper into the floor this time. Of course Hunk would have told Lance, that guy had read Pidge’s diary without permission! Things were certainly not going his way today…

“You didn’t think it was… weird or anything?” Keith slowly asked, with his breath stuck in his throat.

Lance laughed. “Well, we’ve been living in space in a couple of months now, so that was nothing compared to the other weird spacey-things we see on a daily basis! It’s chill, promise.”  The smile died out and left Lance with an empty, almost bitter expression, so unlike Lance that it almost hurt. He remained like that for a while, stripped of his fake confidence until he continued, this time slower and more sincere. “I-I just don’t understand why you cared enough to do something like that.”

It wasn’t often this side of Lance could be seen, and to say that it didn’t scare Keith would be a lie. He had no idea what to say when Lance felt like this, afraid that his clumsy words would accidentally hurt him and everything would be ruined. Keith wasn’t especially known for his capability to control his emotions…

“Isn’t that obvious? You almost died, Lance and I…we were all scared as quiznak! And then you acted as if it was nothing, joking about that knife that could’ve killed you! You’re my… friend, and it hurt.”

Once again, Lance let out a laugh. But it wasn’t a happy one this time, it was rather a dry one.  “Friend, huh? Not often you hear that kind of stuff coming from you.”

Keith raised one eyebrow. “It’s true, right?”

“Yeah, I guess so. It might have taken us a while to get there, sure, but I’m glad that I did get to be… your friend. I…I just wasn’t sure if you ever thought highly enough of me to see me as an equal.” Lance sighed, and let his gaze wander dreamily across the room. Well, that was to say until Keith’s eyes met his and the perplexed expression on Keith’s face made Lance realize what he’d said.

“Well, that’s enough tragic backstory for today!” Lance’s voice was almost twice as loud as it had been earlier, and it was almost sad to watch Lance trying to hold up his faked cheerfulness as he slowly began to fall apart. “Noow, I you excuse me, I have some business to attend to, so _hasta la later!”_ Lance shot some half-hearted finger guns in Keith’s direction, but before Lance had successfully escaped, Keith grabbed Lance’s shirt tightly, pulling him back.

“Why don’t you think that I see you as an equal? You’re the one that used to insult me all the time, I just don´t get it!” Keith voice was almost twice as loud as well, but he didn’t care. Every time he thought that he had Lance all figured out, he realized that he was wrong.  Lance was an unsolved mystery, but Keith was not that kind of guy to give up.

Keith let go of Lance’s shirt, only to grab his hands instead just like they’d done an hour earlier, staring into Lance’s deep blue eyes. Just like the last time, Lance had gone completely blank at first. But after realising that there was no way that Keith would let him run away from this, he seemed to accept his fate and began to ease into the touch.

“I-I…never meant any of the things I said back then, even your mullet looks really good on you, ” Keith could have sworn that Lance had been blushing, and Keith felt his heart skip a beat, “-okaay let’s forget  I said that. Anyway, the reason I acted like a douchebag was because I were jealous. You’re so many things that I wish I was, and I felt like I wasn’t enough and that you never really saw me. Except for when I insulted you or got hurt, well not that I got hurt so that you’d notice me, that would’ve been really stupid even for me but… yeah.”

The response created almost more questions than Keith had gotten answers. Keith tried to collect his thoughts, and tasted carefully the words that were resting on his tongue. “I’ve never looked down on you, if that’s what you’re implying?”

“You haven’t?” Lance asked, looking generally confused.

Keith shook his head. “Never.”

“Oh.”

To think that Lance, despite his normally overconfident self felt this way was a lot to process. How much of Lance’s usual personality was made up, used as an act of defense towards his insecurities? Keith wasn’t sure if he wanted to know. The only thing that mattered tight now was to make sure that Lance knew that all of these thoughts were complete bullshit.

“Don’t ever say that you’re not enough, you’re so much more than enough! You’re kind and thoughtful, you’re a really good friend and a hell of a sharpshooter! And you are smart and witty and kind and… _fuck it_.” And because Keith had always been a man of impulses, he gave up on trying to tell Lance how much he meant to him and decided to show him instead, by pressing his lips against Lance’s.

For a terrifying moment Lance’s mouth was stiff against his own, and Keith was afraid that the things he’d feared would come true after all. But then, Lance kissed him back, softly. _Just like the hugging_ Keith thought to himself, smiling against the warmth of Lance’s lips just like he’d dreamt of doing so many times before, and Keith still wasn’t quite sure if this was real.

They broke apart not long after that, feeling happier than they’d done in a long time. Keith arms were still wrapped around Lance’s neck from the kiss, and he let them remain that way.

“Thanks… for both the compliments and the kiss, or do people even say that?” Keith giggled at this, and Lance blushed and remained that way as he continued;” Anyway I must sound like a total moron right now, but I’ve wanted that to happen for quite a long time but I never thought that would ever actually happen for like at least a million years.”

“Same here. Well, I didn’t quite figure it all out until you were in the cryopod, but I’ve liked you way longer than that, I think. The lines are sort of blurry. How about you?”

Lance smiled. “Since the first time I saw you. Well I had to go through a bi-crisis and another few obstacles on the way, but here I am!”

Words couldn’t describe how much these words meant to him, and he hadn’t noticed that he’d been smiling until his cheeks began to hurt. But even if all of this had gone so much better than Keith’s ever dared to imagine and it took almost all of the willpower that he owned to not kiss Lance over and over again, he couldn’t ignore the heavy things that had lead them to this moment. They may see unnecessary at the moment, but that wouldn’t make them any less real.

“Don’t forget what I said earlier about how much you mean to me, to all of us. And I know it’s hard, I’m really shitty about this thing as well, but don't try to keep all of your insecurities to yourself. As someone once told me, Isolation never works, okay?”

“I’ll try my best, if you’ll try to as well. That five-days sulking must’ve been like super mega bad for your skin, and it wouldn’t surprise me if I’ll get nightmares from the way your hair looked! It looks bad enough as it does now!” Lance said, and ran his hand through Keith’s black hair.

Keith grinned. “I thought you said that you liked my mullet.”

“Well, but I said that you’d forget about that so check and mate _hermoso_ ” Lance answered, and he leaned down to press a caste kiss to Keith’s forehead.

But they didn’t have time to say, or do anything else because the alarm signal had suddenly turned on, and Allura’s voice with her wide British accent told them that they’d gotten a signal from an incoming Galra ship, and they were supposed to head to the lions as quick as possible.

“Try not to forget this bonding moment, will you?” Keith teased as they began to run through the corridors, towards their lions, his chest filled with happiness and excitement. At this moment, Keith felt as if he could take down all of Zarkon’s forces by himself.

Lance laughed, and it was not the forced one this time. It was the real _, a bit too loud to be considered pretty_ one, but Keith didn’t want to have it any other way.

“Babe, I never forgot the first one. ”Lance said, and winked before their ways separated.

When you were a guardian of the Galaxy, accompanied with not only a newly obtained boyfriend but also a team closer than blood, there were very few empty spaces.

But Keith was okay with that.

**Author's Note:**

> me: hmm i guess the message with this fic is to tell people about the things that're bothering you, it never helps to keep it all to yourself!  
> also me: never talks about my problems, stopped talking to my therapist, keeps my emotions bottled up inside  
> me to me: lmao eyy
> 
> ...
> 
> anyway, i hoped you liked this one, and if you didn't thats okay to i guess! and i always love comments(and kudos) so it'd totally make my day if you left one!


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